


i took a picture (so you'll last forever)

by dragon_lovely



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 10:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragon_lovely/pseuds/dragon_lovely
Summary: if you made a venn diagram of the things toni takes pictures of and cheryl blossom, it would be a circleaka a plotless ficlet describing some of the dates that our favorite gays went onaka aka an excuse for me to write a bunch of descriptive fluffy nonsense





	i took a picture (so you'll last forever)

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i'm finally BACK y'all!! just a quick preface for this oneshot -
> 
> i decided to be a cool kid and write in all lowercase because y'know why not?  
> also the long run-on sentences and excessive commas are me trying to be stylish and also kind of imitating train of thought.  
> finally, the perspective is basically on drugs - read, i switch between cheryl and toni with zero warning.
> 
> a lot of my ideas were inspired by @endofdaysforme! all of their fanfics are B E A U T I F U L, and i chose the spot for cheryl's tattoo based on their series. 
> 
> enjoy! and as always, comments feed me more than anything else ever could (:
> 
> ps is anyone else more than ready for 3x12 because i sure as hell am ok bye

toni always had her camera with her. whether it was her actual camera (the panasonic her mother had gotten her for christmas when she was eleven, which she loved), or just her phone, she always had some way to take a picture, somehow. 

this really came in handy once cheryl asked her to move in.

in her defense, it wasn’t her fault that he had such a beautiful girlfriend. it was just so easy to take pictures of her - cheryl was her inspiration. the redhead, however, was not so inclined to agree. she had an obsession with perfection trained into her from birth, and she just didn’t understand the pure beauty toni found in the dewy glow of her makeup-free skin or her unstyled and tangled hair in the morning. however, time and time again, she woke up and within ten minutes of laying in bed together, toni was reaching for her phone to ‘remember this moment forever’.

so they made a deal. they would go out, wherever toni wanted, and she could take as many picture as she wanted. it became their tradition - every other sunday they would find a new place to take pictures. at first, cheryl just did it because it made toni happy, but as time went on, she came to enjoy it, too. it was fun to dress up in a pretty outfit and do her makeup, and it made her feel special when they looked over all of the photos later on toni’s laptop, toni turning to her after every picture to tell her how beautiful she was.

toni, obviously, also enjoyed these outings. she used to go hiking with her dad and grandpa all the time, before her dad died and her grandpa’s arthritis got too bad. they went all over the place, in search of the best place to have a picnic (when she was seven, they had deduced it was on a hill half an hour out of greendale, because if you got there at the right time the sun looked like it was balanced on top of mount wisely while it was setting). so she knew all of the most beautiful spots within an hour drive from riverdale, faster if they took her motorcycle, and it was fun to just be with each other, doing something that they loved, together.

sometimes, she would dress up, too. they would spend the day trying to find a good surface for toni to put her camera on, then take picture after picture of the two of them. hugging, kissing, posing together, anything. 

soon enough, toni had a stack of pictures she had printed, plus a whole other folder of ones she wanted to print on her laptop. they needed a place to put them, to make sure they were safe. so one day, toni came home with three photo albums she had picked up at a thrift store with fangs while looking for a birthday present for kevin.

they spent the rest of the night sorting each of the pictures into the different albums, admiring over each one of them. soon they had to buy another album, then another. they spent many date nights simply picking a photo album and looking through it, reliving the memories that came with each priceless snapshot of their lives.

toni’s favorite outing was during the june before senior year. they were still high of off the newfound freedom of summer, and drove out almost two hours on toni’s motorcycle until they found a grove of cherry trees in their prime - how could they refuse? toni found that, if she angled her camera a certain way, the sunlight refracted into a rainbow halo around cheryl’s head, cherry blossoms edging the outside of the photo.

they stayed in the grassy clearing until the cornflower sky turned a deep violet, the flowery air cooling around them as they gathered their things. toni took one last picture of cheryl as she looked up at the stars, a look of wonder on her girlfriend’s face, before they began the journey home.

 

veronica discovered the photo albums a couple months after that trip. they must have accidentally left one of the albums on their coffee table, and when veronica came over after school one day to work on a biology project with cheryl, she began to flip through it. 

veronica thought it was adorable, and immediately demanded to see the rest of them, because, ‘i’ve seen how that girl looks at you, cheryl. if there’s one book of pictures, there has to be at least three more’. after nearly an hour of close inspection, veronica finally decided on a favorite. toni had to smile when when she saw the one she was pointing to.

toni had taken it on a crisp autumn day about a month ago. riverdale was finally starting to feel the fall spirit, and orange and black garlands were strung along the buildings down main street to match the fallen leaves that surrounded many of the houses. they had woken up tangled up in each other, the bedroom window slightly open to let in the cold air. the two stopped by pops to pick up some pastries, a cherry scone for cheryl and a chocolate croissant for toni, before going out on their date. toni had chosen some random spot south of riverdale, a campground or something, and they began to drive.

it was an absolutely beautiful day, the sky a pale, robin’s egg blue and the air smelled like pine needles and life. they rolled down all of the windows and turned the radio all of the way up, toni singing along to one of ariana’s new songs as cheryl followed the directions on her phone and laughed at toni’s slightly messed up lyrics.

after maybe forty-five minutes of driving, they parked in the lot and began the small hike towards the top of the mountain. there was a little bit of snow dotting the woods, which was probably why they saw next to no one else on the trail. they did stop to chat with someone walking the other way, cheryl to ask how much of the trail was left and toni to pet their dog.

despite cheryl’s self-acclaimed aversion to all things outdoors, excluding her archery, toni’s girlfriend was a surprisingly good hiker. they made good time and managed to get to the peak in under an hour. though the mountain wasn’t all that elevated, it was just high enough to look out over the forest. in the distance, they could hear the sounds of the cars on the highway, but other than that they were completely alone. before they started taking pictures, they sat together under a pine tree and ate their pastries, exchanging stories about their various escapades in the ‘great outdoors’. toni learned that jason had always loved to go hiking, and after he died cheryl would run along some more woody trails in fox forest to feel closer to him, and cheryl discovered that toni’s grandfather had a map of the best hiking trails around riverdale stored away somewhere in his trailer from when he was younger. 

by the time they had finished it was late morning, and toni reluctantly brushed her self off and set up her camera. before they left, toni had been able to braid cheryl’s hair into two absolutely adorable buns on either side of her head. she had forgone the classic red lipstick for some clear gloss, and she was just wearing a burgundy sweater and a scarf with some black jeans and boots. when she had walked out of the closet that morning, toni had immediately told her that she looked, ‘absolutely adorable’, to which cheryl rolled her eyes and said, ‘half of this town is scared of me, tt, i am not adorable’. despite her criticization of her outfit, toni knew that her girlfriend loved dressing like this, all soft edges and warm colors, and toni loved it just as much because she knew that she was the only one that go to see cheryl like this. 

the picture veronica picked out was one of their favorites. they were standing in a clearing towards the edge of the mountain, and the sun had just peeked over the trees. toni had gotten the picture right as cheryl was on the verge of smiling, and it was possibly the sweetest thing that she had ever had the pleasure of seeing. cheryl’s mouth was quirked in an almost-grin, and her eyes were gleaming with happiness. as toni was taking the picture, toni only had one thought in mind: maybe ariana is right, god is a woman. 

veronica said, ‘i’ve never seen anyone glow like that, cher, that’s so cute, which would have been an acceptable comment except veronica continued to say, smirking, “unless...there’s another reason you’ve got that afterglow’. cheryl simply responded by throwing the nearest pillow straight into veronica’s face.

 

the next people to find their albums were fangs and sweet pea. veronica had whisked cheryl and the rest of that group away for a ‘girls trip’ to new york city, and toni was invited but declined in favor of spending a couple nights with her brothers. it had been a rush with the end of the semester and finals, plus since toni started dating cheryl and fangs started dating kevin it had been hard for them to get together, just like old times. sometime throughout the night sweet pea had pulled out a whole ice chest of beers, which seemed to appear out of nowhere, and let’s just say that all three of them had more than a few. 

eventually they wandered into the study for something that was immediately forgotten when toni saw one of the albums on cheryl’s desk. she called over the other two boys and painstakingly went through every single one, her drunk self falling head over heels in love with her girlfriend all over again. once they had gotten through them all, sweet pea opened up one of them and flipped through it until he finally paused at a page that made toni grin.

it was taken during the road trip the two had taken over the summer between sophomore and junior year, just a month or so after cheryl had joined the serpents. as such, she was given the obligatory tattoo. after a lot of consideration, because ‘i’m not going to mark up my skin just anywhere, tt,”, she finally decided on the left shoulder. sweet pea, who had also given toni her tattoo, spent a hot summer morning perfecting the design, and by the end of the day cheryl’s shoulder was proudly emblazoned with a two-headed snake. a couple days later they started their trip towards san francisco, and they never got a chance to take a picture of the tattoo.

so one day, in some small coastal town only a couple days out from their destination, cheryl dragged toni down to a beach. she was dressed in a butter-yellow bikini top, black jean shorts, and a pair gladiator sandals. toni had put the redhead’s hair back in a fishtail side braid earlier that morning, and cheryl’s tattoo was on full display behind a pale yellow strap.

they strolled around for a while, looking for a good spot to take pictures, and cheryl finally paused in front of a small pool of water that trailed out to the ocean a couple hundred yards away. there was a large rock near the pond, some footholds worn into the rock from a combination of years of climbing and the rough ocean winds. cheryl clambered to the top of the rock, and, looking down at toni, asked her if it was, ‘a good enough angle to show of the magnificent work of art that is my body, tt?’

toni just laughed and told her, ‘of course, baby, any angle is a good angle for you,’ before directing her into different poses. the one sweet pea was pointing at was a one of her best, toni had to admit. cheryl’s back was to the camera, but her face was tilted over her shoulder in her best ‘don’t fuck with me’ look. one of her legs was pressed up against her chest, and the red of her braid contrasted beautifully with the alabaster of her skin.

of course, the star of the show was the tattoo. toni didn’t think that she had ever even seen a tattoo look as perfect on someone as that serpent tattoo looked on cheryl. even jughead had agreed when toni had proudly paraded her girlfriend around the whyte wyrm afterward she had gotten it done, a contented smile on cheryl’s face as toni marched around to each table to show it off. it was definitely some of sweet pea’s best work, though the threats cheryl had made if he messed it up, most referring to his manhood, probably also had something to do with it. so toni definitely understood why sweet pea liked that picture. it perfectly captured cheryl as a serpent - loyal, elegant, and deadly.

drunk fangs was a little more sentimental. it was actually a pretty recent one, from around the holidays. naturally, cheryl had been freaking out about everything being perfect - it was her first christmas with toni and the boys, and as much as toni told her that it didn’t have to be extravagant cheryl still wanted to impress them, to prove that she cared about them, despite their, well, less than friendly history .

toni had come home a couple days before christmas after a long night of bartending at around three in the morning, expecting to see her girlfriend asleep in their bedroom. she found her girlfriend asleep, that was for sure, but she was also surrounded by gift wrap and presents in the ‘parlor’, as cheryl demanded they call it. the redhead was snuggled up in an armchair under one of the many quilts nana rose had made when she was younger. the living room was toasty, with the embers of a fire dying in the fireplace, and the lamp next to cheryl’s chair cast a soft glow over the room. her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she looked so peaceful that toni almost melted. 

as carefully as possible toni pulled her phone out of her bag and began to take some pictures. everything was going well until toni tripped over a roll of wrapping paper and unceremoniously fell in a heap on the floor. cheryl slowly stirred from the armchair and yawned, and the moment was over. however, when toni was looking at the pictures the next morning after uploading them onto her laptop, she still thought they were the cutest thing that she had ever seen, so they were added to the abundant collection.

 

polly had discovered the photos while dropping off the twins for some ‘fun aunty-aunty-niece-nephew bonding time’, as cheryl liked to call it, and toni’s heart clenched a little every time she said it because it made her so happy that cheryl considered her as a part of her family. 

polly had wandered off to find the bathroom, and after she had been gone for fifteen minutes cheryl asked toni if she would go and check on her. that was when she found polly in the office (which, in her defense, was only two doors down from the bathroom), looking at their most recent album of pictures. or, more accurately, one specific page. toni knocked gently on the door before coming up to stand next to the taller woman. her eyes fell on the page that polly had open, and she felt tears well up in her eyes at the memory.

toni had woken up to an empty bed that morning, which was a little bit disconcerting within itself because after toni cheryl loved nothing more than sleep, but a glance around proved that, a, it was five thirty in the morning, and b, cheryl was not in their bedroom. this was a little more worrying, since there was no note or anything, but the bed was still a little warm so toni reasoned she couldn’t be far.

sure enough, after fifteen minutes of searching toni found cheryl leaning over a balcony outside of one of the many empty rooms in thistlehouse. the sun was just rising, painting everything with a weak, yellow light. she leaned up against the balcony, next to cheryl but not close enough to scare her off, and murmured ‘good morning’. cheryl didn’t turn towards her, a single tear trailing down her cheeks, but she whispered a broken response before falling silent once more. toni waited mutely for cheryl to speak as the sun rose a little higher in the sky, permeating the fog that lingered around the edges of the town. 

after what seemed like hours but was probably only ten minutes, cheryl requested, so quietly toni had to strain her ears to hear, if they could go to the blossom cemetery, and toni nodded furiously, because yeah it was an eccentric request but but she would travel to the ends of the earth if that was what cheryl wanted. within ten minutes they had exited the house, cheryl gently placing the keys to her impala in toni’s hands as she hiked a black duffel bag over her shoulder. 

of course toni was curious about the bag, but she wasn’t about to ask when cheryl looked like she was on the brink of tears and was curled up in the passenger seat like she wanted to bury herself into the leather. the drive seemed like it went by in a second, toni focused on the road to give cheryl some semblance of privacy. she parked outside the gates, the burnt remains of thornehill towering in the distance. 

toni was drinking in the fresh air when she heard a zipping noise and turned around in time to find cheryl shrugging on an oversized jacket, tucking her fingers into the pockets and shivering slightly from the chill. toni stared for a moment as she tried to place where she had seen that jacket, or one similar to it, when it clicked. her suspicions were proved as cheryl turned her back and began to walk into the graveyard, ‘blossom’ emblazoned on the blue fabric in gold lettering: jason’s jacket. 

toni didn’t really know what to say as she trailed past her girlfriend, passing through generations of blossoms without a second glance. after a couple of minutes, they got to a tombstone that was clearly newer than the rest. a couple of flowers, those red ones that only seem to pop up around christmas and honestly look like they were made of plastic, were planted on either side of the slab, and toni didn’t have to look at the name to know that this was why they had come here.

they stood there for ten minutes before toni worked up the courage to ask her girlfriend why, exactly, they had come to the cemetery this early. cheryl flinched, as if she had forgotten toni was there, before turning to her and asking her in a low voice if, ‘maybe you could take some pictures of me and….and jason?’ and toni’s heart fucking shattered at the glimmer of hope in her doe eyes, as if she was expecting toni to refuse.

toni only nodded mutely, already feeling a little guilty for breaking the silence in the graveyard and watched as cheryl picked her way through the snow to perch gently on the rim of the gravestone, facing her. she reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of marlboro’s and a lighter (red, of course), only saying ‘they were jason’s favorite brand’ in response to the look toni didn’t realize she had on her face. 

she raised the cigarette to her lips and toni watched as the cherry red flame sparked the gray paper to life, filling the air with the faintest scent of tobacco. however, the look on cheryl’s face as she inhaled the smoke was a mixture of heartbreaking and awe-inspiring, and it made toni thank every saint she knew for her seventh grade english teacher giving her the work ‘melancholy’ on the middle school spelling bee because there were no other words to describe it. 

smoke billowed into the air as cheryl exhaled and opened her eyes in tangent, tears streaming down her face, and toni felt the sudden urge to throw her camera far, far away because even she felt as if she was intruding on such an intimate moment, she couldn’t even imagine recording it and putting it down in a book. however, she ignored that inane part of her brain and instead moved behind the gravestone to take her pictures, wanting to give cheryl a little bit of time alone.

it wasn’t until later, as they lay tangled in cheryl’s blood red sheets, that she learned what had warranted such a trip. they had been looking through the photos when cheryl had begun to break down, as if she had been keeping her tears inside until now, and between choked sobs she told toni that today was the day she found out that her father had killed jason and, by extension, the same day that her father had committed suicide.

they skipped school that day.

she had to admit, the photo was very powerful. there was something so magnetic about the contrast of the light blue sky and cheryl’s crimson hair, the harmony of the smoke that seemed to ripple up in waves and the snow that lay around the gravestone. somehow, the minimalist effect of the picture brought tears to toni’s eyes every time.

it seemed to have the same effect on polly, and toni promised to send her a copy of the picture as soon as the blonde moved into her new apartment in greendale (cheryl had spent ages trying to convince her cousin to stay in riverdale because ‘under no circumstances is a blossom going to live in greendale’, and when polly had refused to change her mind cheryl eventually decided to put aside her prejudices and help her find somewhere to live), and after that toni held a bit more respect for the young woman. after all, if she had good taste in photography, she couldn’t be all that bad, right?

 

finally, their senior year was over. after months of stress and studying, cheryl and toni were finally free of school - until august, anyways. they were sticking around for a couple more weeks before heading over to california, where toni was majoring in photography at an art school and cheryl was double majoring in business and psychology. 

it was actually veronica who suggested it. she had found out that there was a sort of ‘off-brand cherry blossom festival only an hour away from riverdale, and we simply must go as a group’, as she put it, and had managed to rope everyone into this little escapade. she had even bribed jughead to come by promising to pay for any fair food he might want. 

so, one hot june morning, they all piled into their various vehicles and began the drive to some small town in eastern new york. instead of wearing her serpent jacket, cheryl had opted to wear a jacket that had toni grinning from the memory as she ran her fingers along the leather stars before hugging her girlfriend.

‘i never believed in love at first sight until i first saw you in this very jacket, babe. you had me hooked from the start,’ toni had breathed into her ear, which led to an encounter that had cheryl rushing to the bathroom to fix her lipstick before they both got onto toni’s motorcycle and headed over to the pembrooke to meet the core four and company.

the fair was actually pretty fun, despite cheryl’s doubts about it being too ‘pedestrian’. the decorations were quite stunning, light pink and blue streamers strung up in the bows of cherry trees laden with soft blossoms. reggie managed to pull a bottle of vodka from out of his ass or somewhere else similarly suspicious, but she wasn’t complaining about the light buzz that seemed to heighten toni’s beauty. 

cheryl still marveled at just how amazingly gorgeous her girlfriend truly was. despite the fact that they had almost never been apart since they got together, what with toni moving in to thistlehouse only a couple months after their first date, cheryl was sure that she would never, ever get sick of looking at antoinette topaz, as long as she lived.

toni had always loved fairs since she was a child. there was something so magical about everyone coming together for a temporary opportunity, something that may never happen again, yet here they all were. however, the one thing that made any fair experience even more magical was having her beautiful girlfriend by her side.

every day she spent with cheryl, she fell more and more in love. she had come to the conclusion a long, long time ago that she was very much enamored with cheryl blossom, a realization both terrifyingly permanent yet exhilaratingly freeing. for just like cheryl herself, toni’s love for her magnificent girlfriend was a paradox. two girls that couldn’t be more different, crossing the sky and the sea to find each other over and over again. it was so hopelessly romantic, and toni wouldn’t have it any other way, for she couldn’t even imagine a world where she was not in love with cheryl.

it wasn’t until the sun was hanging low in the sky that kevin convinced all of the couples to get on the ferris wheel, explaining something about tradition and love, simon that toni was really only half paying attention to. she and cheryl clambered into the gondola, and before they knew it the ride began to move. toni grabbed cheryl’s hand, and cheryl glanced at her and smiled as she leaned her head against toni’s shoulder.

they didn’t say anything, just basked in each other’s presence and listened to the sounds of the festival. as they reached the top, the ferris wheel ground to a halt, and toni’s jaw dropped a little. they were suspended hundreds of feet above the festival, and toni honestly thought she might have been a little scared if the sky hadn’t looked so goddamn beautiful. 

the sun was setting in front of them, giving everything a pink glow, and the clouds looked like cotton candy hanging from a lavender sky. she felt cheryl shift on her shoulder, and she turned towards her girlfriend to find her looking into her eyes. 

their lips connected, sweet and slow and everything toni could have dreamed of, and the world seemed to pause around them as cheryl clung to the back of toni’s neck and deepened the kiss. 

toni knew, right then, that sometimes, she didn’t need to take a picture. because the real moments, the truly treasured memories would never fade. they will last forever.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! i'm thinking about doing some quick sketches of the pictures i mention in this story and posting it, so if you think that's a good idea please let me know in the comments (oof that was a very youtuber thing to say), though quick disclaimer i am in NO means an artist.
> 
> just a quick note-  
> i tried to make the last part (the kiss lmao) like the polar opposite of their first kiss in the soqm. i'm not completely sure if i succeeded, but whatever!
> 
> have a nice day!


End file.
